Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, just gave a wide-ranging interviewto Edward Pentin, the Rome Correspondent of the National Catholic Register. Among other important aspects of this report, Cardinal Müller for the first time admits publicly that the Congregation for the Faith did not itself edit the final version of the papal document Amoris Laetitia, and that he does not even know who actually did the final editing of that document. In this 29 September interview, Cardinal Müller for the first time revealed how fear-filled the atmosphere in Rome now is. He also calls for a further discussion of the dubia, and he defends Cardinal Carlo Caffarra in his expertise as a moral theologian. In the following, we shall present the most crucial section of that lengthy interview in which he explicitly speaks about people who are being spied upon in and about the Vatican:

Careerists and opportunists should not be promoted, and other people who are competent collaborators not excluded without any reason or expelled from the Curia. It’s not good. I heard it from some houses here, that people working in the Curia are living in great fear: If they say one small or harmless critical word, some spies will pass the comments directly to the Holy Father, and the falsely accused people don’t have any chance to defend themselves. These people, who are speaking bad words and lies against other persons, are disturbing and disrupting the good faith, the good name of others whom they are calling their brothers.

The Gospel and the words of Jesus are very strong against those who denounce their brothers and who are creating this bad atmosphere of suspicion. I’ve heard that nobody speaks; everyone is a little afraid because they can be snitched on. It’s not the behavior of adult people, but that of a boarding school.

[Edward Pentin:] One senior Church figure, speaking to me on condition of anonymity, called it a “reign of terror.”

[Cardinal Müller:] It’s the same in some theological faculties — if anybody has any remarks or questions about Amoris Laetitia, they will be expelled, and so on. That is not maturity. A certain interpretation of the document’s Footnote 351 cannot be criteria for becoming a bishop. A future bishop must be a witness to the Gospel, a successor of the apostles, and not only someone who repeats some words of a single pastoral document of the Pope without a mature theological understanding. […]

[Edward Pentin:] Regarding Amoris Laetitia and the fear of criticizing it, and the lack of response to the dubia, isn’t the irony that it goes against the Pope’s wish for parrhesia (to speak boldly and frankly) and dialogue?

[Cardinal Müller:] Everyone who becomes bishop, cardinal or pope must learn to distinguish between the critics who are against the person and critics against the mission you have. The Holy Father, Francis, must know that it is important one accepts his intention: to help those people who are distant from the Church, from the belief of the Church, from Jesus Christ, who wanted to help them. … This discussion is not against him, it is not against his intentions, but there is need of more clarification. Also, in the past, we had discussions about the faith and the pastoral application of it. It’s not the first time this has happened in the Church, and so why not learn from our long experiences as Church, to have a good, profound discussion in promoting the faith, the life of the Church and not to personalize and polarize? It’s not a personal criticism of him, and everybody must learn it and respect his high responsibility. It is a very big danger for the Church that some ideological groups present themselves as the exclusive guardians of the only true interpretation of Amoris Laetitia. They feel they have the right to condemn all people of another standpoint as stupid, rigid, old-fashioned, medieval, etc.

Nobody can, for example, say Cardinal Caffarra didn’t understand anything of moral theology.Sometimes the un-Christian behavior is printed in L’Osservatore Romano, the semi-official Vatican newspaper, or given in official organs of the media, to make polemics and rhetoric. This cannot help us in this situation — only a profound theological discussion will. [emphasis added]

These observations and comments have some grave implications with regard to the papacy of Pope Francis, inasmuch as he is, finally, responsible for this atmosphere of fear and distrust in Rome; and even for the suppression of some of the orthodox clergy and laymen (such as the highly respected Professor Josef Seifert).

In another section of his interview, however, Cardinal Müller insists, with regard to the confusion concerning Amoris Laetitia, that it is somehow not the pope’s fault: “I think the Pope should not be blamed for this confusion, but he is authorized by Jesus Christ to overcome it [the confusion].”

Cardinal Müller is at least to be commended for his courage to speak much truth in this new interview, and he likely will suffer for it. However, one may politely challenge him as to why he still does not call that man to come forth who is actually responsible, in the end, for this current state of affairs within the Catholic Church: Pope Francis himself. Do we not all have a duty loyally to resist him for creating such an atmosphere of fear and distrust and for suppressing the truly orthodox teaching? For, is it not finally about Christ’s own truth that we reverently speak?

Like this:

IN MUMBAI TOO ONE MR. TONY FERNANDES FROM BALLARD PIER IS BEING DENIED HOLY COMMUNION ONLY IN ST. JOHN THE EVENGELIST CHURCH WHERE HE IS A PARISHIONER.

ACCORDING TO MR. TONY FERNANDES HE WAS FIRST DENIED COMMUNION BY FR. REUBEN TELLIS AS ACCORDING TO THE MUMBAI HIERARCHY HIS FIRST MARRIAGE IS NOT ANNULLED .

I FIND THIS REASONING OF ALLOWING HIM TO RECEIVE COMMUNION IN OTHER CHURCHES WHILE BEING DENIED COMMUNION IN HIS OWN PARISH AS STRANGE . THE ARCHBISHOPS HOUSE ALLOWS A PERSON WHO IS MARRIED IN A TEMPLE TO RECEIVE COMMUNION WHILE DENYING TONY THE SAME PRIVILEGE. AS PER HINDU LAW ONLY A HINDU CAN MARRY IN A TEMPLE.

THIS IS ONE MORE INSTANCE OF THE DOUBLE STANDARDS ADOPTED BY THE CARDINAL AND THE BISHOPS OF ARCHBISHOPS HOUSE.

IF THE CARDINAL BELIEVES IN REALLY NOT GIVING COMMUNION TO SOMEONE WHOSE MARRIAGE IS NOT ANNULLED HE SHOULD PUBLICLY SHOW HIS DISPLEASURE TO THE POPES ACT AND SHOULD ALSO MAKE A PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT .

A. M.SODDER

READ BELOW THE ARTICLES AND JUDGE FOR YOURSELF

Was not Jesus a Heretic of his times?

Who are heretics of today?

Who the modern witch hunters?

james kottoor (Kochi)

Whoever may say whatever they like about Pope Francis and his stock of heresies! This editor of CCV can neither swallow it, much less digest it. Was not crusades heresy par excellence in action? Beauty is in the beholder’s eyes! Even so ugliness! Was the inquisition, Christian or heretical teaching par excellence? What about the burning of Joan of Arc? Francis did no such things?

An act becomes sin or virtue according to one’s subjective conviction and perception, not according to its objective value content. Hence the injunction: Judge not and you shall not be judged.

Why communion to divorced, cohabitants wrong?

Irresistible magnetic pull for sexual bliss is what draws and binds man and woman to become fully human, complete, as one without the other is only a piece of humanity, incomplete in God’s vision of creation. This was so even before marriage was invented or instituted as a sacrament by the Catholic Church. Celibate priests and bishops, especially the reluctant ones, often rue over what they gave up willingly or unwillingly. Therefore, they, who are often envious of the married, are not the right persons to decide how sex is to be used in or outside marriage.

Sex is sex, same objectively for the married and prostitutes. What makes it different for both is the motive. Only in that context we can understand the rebuke of Jesus to the scribes, Pharisees and priestly class of his times: “Drunkards and prostitutes will go to heaven before you.” Francis is accused by modern celibates for being lenient or lax towards divorced and remarried, when they are allowed or permitted communion on various conditions.

Think of what Jesus did with the woman caught in adultery, when the Pharisees, the advocates of set rues and principles wanted her to be stoned to death? Think of the woman at the Jacob’s well who had eight husbands who went preaching Christ after the encounter, nay real communion with Jesus. Again think of Mary, a known sinner or prostitute, (unnamed in three evangelists, but named as Mary in John) who anointed Jesus’ feet at Simon’ banquet ( or Simon the leper!) and whom Jesus praised sky high for her love unsullied! Was not Jesus then literally acting as a heretic? He definitely was, and literally opposed to the defenders of law and prophets of his time and our time. That was precisely the reason he was crucified.

Also in all three instances, was not Jesus intimately communing with the prostitutes, married and divorced, especially in the case of woman with 8 husbands? Was not His communion much more real, lively and concrete than in any sacramental communion, only symbolic, which Francis permits to divorced or cohabitants,against which today’s self-righteous Catholic scholars (some cardinals and bishops, and some lay theologians, some 62 of them) rail against? Are not these critics more blind than ‘Bar Thimeus?’

Popular perception

This reminds us of a story about a very upright Irish Catholic grandma. Her grandson was in love with a young beauty. Since he was dead set on marrying her, he broke the news to his grandma in a private conversation, as youngsters usually do with their Grandmas. “What religion does the girl belong?” asked the Grandma. “She is a Protestant!”, said the boy. Gone white with rage, the good old lady shouted:

“Protestant? A Catholic marrying a Protestant?” The boy shouted back with equal sound and excitement: “No Grandma, I said: ‘Prostitute’ not ‘Protestant’.” The grandma was much relieved and said: “That is all right!” The story was to highlight, Catholic-Protestant prejudice. But it also speaks volumes about what ordinary people, not scholars, doctors and celibate clergy, think of sex for married, divorced or prostitutes.

Good Pastor Francis

Pope Francis is down to earth a “Pastor Bonus”, a good Pastor, like Jesus, always on the run looking for the wounded and dying sheep in the battle field and never at rest. Because of the many heretical things he spoke and did, Jesus could survive only three years of public life among the scribes, Pharisees and high priests of his time. If he were living today, it is doubtful, Jesus could have survived as long as Francis is surviving.

People who benefitted most during Jesus’ time were the CATTLE CLASS group, the poor, the ignored and down trodden, not the doctors and teachers of the law and prophets. So may Francis live a hundred years to take care of the Cattle Class driven around as migrants, homeless, jobless and landless and therefore condemned to die in ever so many shipwrecks in deep seas. The so-called doctors and teachers of doctrine and law must first explain clearly the subtle difference between change, development and decay. People are rejecting today what is stinking due to decay. james kottoor, editor ccv.

Pope Francis has been accused of heresy for his efforts to liberalise the church’s understanding of divorce

The efforts of Pope Francis to reverse his predecessors’ policy on divorce have provoked a backlash. Photograph: Zuma/Rex/Shutterstock

A group of conservative clerics has accused Pope Francis of heresy for his attempts to liberalise the church’s treatment of divorced people. This raises an interesting question: how long must a pope be dead before his opinions can safely be ignored?

For many people the answer is “no time at all”: it is not just humanists, Muslims and Protestants, but the vast majority of the world’s Catholics who take little notice of Catholic doctrine when they disagree with it. The Catholic right ignores more than a hundred years of consistent papal teaching against the excesses of capitalism, along with more recent denunciations of the death penalty, of wars of aggression and of environmental destruction. The Catholic left ignores the pope’s teachings on sexuality – and everyone ignores the ban on contraception.

Popes themselves, however, are meant to take their predecessors very seriously even though neither party is writing infallibly. Papal encyclicals read like legal documents, buttressed with footnotes to prove that doctrine has not changed, and that they are just repeating what their predecessors meant, even when they contradict what was plainly said. Those magnificent robes conceal some very fancy footwork at times. It is an article of faith – literally – that doctrine can never change, only develop, and the eye of faith can clearly see the subtle differences between change, development and decay. So the 19th-century denunciations of democracy and freedom of thought and conscience are now ignored, but pope John Paul II’s refusal to admit women priests looks certain to stand for another couple of centuries at least.

What, though, of Pope John Paul II’s equally clear denunciation of divorced and remarried couples taking communion, restated forcefully only 14 years ago? “Those who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin”, as he referred to remarried divorcees, are to be banned from participation in the central rite of the church. Even at the time, this was widely ignored – his letter is one of those laws from which historians can conclude that the conduct banned was commonplace. There can be very few Catholic congregations in the west without divorced and remarried communicants and everyone knows this. To turn them away at the altar rails would cause a public scandal, and that is also banned. So it’s unlikely that the letter had any effect on the facts on the ground.

But the efforts of the present pope, Francis, to reverse his predecessors’ policyhave provoked a vigorous backlash. Whether he is changing doctrine, as his opponents charge, or merely the interpretation of doctrine, as his supporters claim, there is no doubt that he wants the church to encourage some of the people who are in breach of its regulations on sexuality to take communion. The issue is simply no longer controversial in any other church, despite Jesus’s clear statement of principled opposition to divorce.

Only the Catholic church has the combination of bureaucracy and authoritarianism that makes it so difficult for the clergy to learn from the experience of their flocks. The very idea that the church should learn from the world and not teach it outrages some Catholics. The most recent development is the publication of a long letter accusing the pope of heresy for his beliefs about remarriage, signed by 62 conservative clergy, who appear keen on refighting the Reformation 500 years on: they also accuse Francis of various Lutheran heresies incomprehensible to the untrained mind.

Francis sees the church as a hospital; his enemies see it (as Luther did) as a kind of fortress against error and infidels. The important thing, though, is that Francis after years of debate is winning the argument. There are 4,000 bishops in the worldwide church; only one, who is 94, has signed it. Plenty of Catholics may disagree with Francis. But no one in the hierarchy dares publicly ignore him, at least while he’s alive.

The Pereira family is an East Indian family which owned Nicholas House side of St. Thomas Church Goregaon East. Somewhere around the year 2008 the School was in need of premises for its Jr. KG and the said Church authorities approached the family and asked them to bail them out.

The family spent more than 14 lakhs to renovate the premises, put a slab and make 4 class rooms by demolishing their kitchen all to help the Catholic community. Fr. Barthol then called one of the Pereira boys and told him that the maximum rent which the Church could afford would be Rs. 12,500/-. The Pereiras are business men and themselves knew that the Rs. 14,00,000/- which they had spent on renovation would have fetched them much more interest than Rs. 12,500 per month which was the rent the school was paying them . They trusted the Church Hierarchy blindly that they did not even bother to make a leave and license agreement with the Church. That was the faith they had in the Catholic Church.

The Pereiras are the same people who have built the Grotto in the Church , fixed tiles and have helped the church and seminary in various other ways too.

Despite 9 years having passed the Church continues to occupy the premises. To add insult to injury the Church has filed a declaratory suit to declare themselves as tenants.

My question is what is the difference between the Church Hierarchy and a corrupt businessman?

Where has all the preaching about imitating Christ gone? Would Christ have behaved in this manner?

What about the ten commandments?

How many Priests and Religious are willing to take a stand and state what has been done to the Pereira family is right or wrong?

Bishops are now blaming advocates and are saying that advocates advised them not to give back the house. It is common knowledge that the client engages the advocate and the advocate acts as per the clients instructions.

As a Bishop , isnt it Bishop Barthols personal responsibility to give the house back which he had taken ?

Mumbai Laity be ware.

Give you donations directly to a poor family at least that family will pray for you. Some of your donations are being used to pay dental bills of rich people (who can afford to fly abroad regularly ) which is specifically prohibited as per church rules.

The Bishops’ Conference of Brazil has already decided to observe “An Year of the Laity” starting from the Feast of Christ the King 2017 to the same feast in 2018.

The idea has struck a welcome chord with many around the world, especially the Catholic Church Reform Int’l (CCRInt’l) of which many in India and over 60 countries in the world, are active members. CCRI’l therefore took up the leadership role and sent a letter to the Cardinal Kevin Farrell, in charge of Vatican commission for ‘Laity, Family & Life’ on July 12, 2017. Fr. Giovanni Buontempo, the spokesperson for the laity commission has immediately responded to the CCRI letter saying, the whole matter is being evaluated sympathetically by the Holy See. The reply from the Vatican is given below.

Hour of the laity

Active participation of the laity in the Church is quite in tune with the vision of Pope Francis for the

Church today. In fact it was Francis who was the first to wake up the whole church saying, “it is the hour of the laity” when the so-called clerical class – priests and bishops – should stop talking and start listening to what the laity have to say to draw inspiration and guidance, because it is the laity who are in constant touch with the harsh realities of daily’s life in the world where the Church has to make its presence relevant and meaningful. The clerical class is not anywhere there.

They are usually idling their precious time in the comfort zones of the air-conditioned presbyteries. That precisely was the reason which prompted Francis to call out constantly from the very start of his pontificate: “Get out, get out from the cozy comfort of your church of the sacristy, to go to the peripheries where people in need of your urgent service live – where the “Cattle class” in opposition to the “Clerical class” — the homeless, the jobless, the poor, the sick, the lonely, the drug addicts, drunkards and prostitutes, the widows and orphans live in inhuman conditions. It is for these marginalized, discarded, uncared for riff-raffs; the least, last and lost – yes the lost sheep, not the well-cared for, that the Son of man came searching, to carry it on his shoulders to look after in a love-and-care home.

Ghetto Catholicism

The Son man came to redeem the whole world (ut omnis hominis salvus fieri) and immediately after, as the parable of the good and bad seed sower shows, in the 3rd century came the Roman emperor Constantine (280 – 337 A.D.) in all royal splendour to snatch it from the common folks — the hoipoloi – for the private keep of a privileged few with its pyramidal hierarchal display of worldly power and pomp, which later came to be called the Catholic Church, an oxymoron, because Catholic should mean universal embracing the whole world, where as the the Constantenian Church shrunk it to the level of a privileged few. Thus was born the present ghetto-

catholicism, claiming to be universal but restricted only to its card-carrying members. That gave rise also to the proliferation of thousands of churches starting with the reformation.

Till Constantine’s take over, the followers of Jesus, the carpenter of Nazareth lived as one community having everything in common, each one contributing according to his/her capacities and getting from the community according to his/her needs. So there was no one in need. There was no clergy laity divide either. For prayer and worship they gathered in various families and its head, male or female acted as the priest or celebrant. Today 99% of the bulk of believers have lost that equality of theirs with the rest, as brothers and sisters.

Hour of laity = Equality

By enforcing the hour of the laity Francis is bringing back to the catholic fold the original vision of equality among all the followers of Jesus. If and when that vision take concrete shape, during deliberations of the hour of the laity, let us fondly hope it will last much more than an hour or one year of deliberation if and when it is announced. When that happens the Catholic church will be shorn of all the present recognising and recognizable features, all to be reduced to brothers and sisters, all serving one another starting with those most in need; one who does not work according to his/her capacities should not eat; and no honorific positions or titles either.

Of course the projection of “Laity being in the forefront of the Church started way back in the time of Pius XII, only they are still in the back yard, not moved one bit to the front raw in spite of Francis telling the clergy to keep their mouth shut and listen to the laity who sweat and toil grappling with bread and butter issues from dawn to dusk.

Fear of Sabotage?

There is an awful lot to discuss which should interest all, if and when the year of the laity is announced. The only fear lurking now is whether the comfortable class in the church will allow such an explosive subject to be discussed openly in the Church, even as the “Dubia-Crazy” cardinals went berserk to prevent a happy consensus on “a God of Mercy and Compasion” which Francis had to bring out unilaterally and force it down the throat of all revered synod fathers.

So we call upon the whole battalion of the laity in the Church who form 99% of the people of God to pray earnestly so that the proposal, “Year of the Laity” may gain majority support at the Vatican for the speedy implementation of urgent reforms planned to be introduced by Pope Francis. james kottoor, editor, ccv.